Gynaecology

I'm currently doing my fourth rotation in Family Medicine. I have been allocated to the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology for the next three months. Since it is such a small hospital I'm working at, there actually is no obstetrics in our hospital. You have to go to the next nearest hospital if you have an obstetrics problem. Also we only admit patients from 09:00 to 17:00, which I find very strange. Well at least when I'm on call, which is only four to five times per month, I can get a full night's rest.

Most of the time is spent in the out patient clinics seeing gynaecology patients. That's means seeing a lot of women. If you think for a guy this would be a dream, it is not. Neither it is a nightmare. I have to be careful what I write since I'm liable to offend half the readers of this blog. Most of the ladies I'm seeing are already in their forties when they have gynaecology problems, so I'm not going to meet the women of my dreams in this department. I also have mixed feelings about seeing so many ladies. I'm usually very disappointed at myself, seeing many ladies younger than me who have already had sex plus attending to many ladies older than me who are still a virgin. It's just like looking into my own future ten years from now.

Also I have to stare at "that thing" every time I have to do a gynaecology examination. Call it what you will - fanny, pussy, vagina, cunt - it looks more and more horrible the more times you are exposed to it. The situation definitely puts you off sex for quite a while. I have been brought up seeing women without pubic hair near their vaginas, so I have been rather spoilt and whenever I see a women's vagina not shaven, it looks like one of those sand monsters in the beginning of "Return of the Jedi".

I'm not saying seeing gynaecological patients is a bad experience. I know women have to go through a monthly cycle of anguish and pain and discomfort, which I would never want to consider. But I will be thankful when this rotation is over.

Democracy at work

Next month two places which I am linked to will be holding elections to determine different matters.

Firstly there is the General Election in the United Kingdom on May 6th. This election has been anticipated for the past two years, with the Labour party losing its popularity. The Conservatives have overtaken Gordon Brown's government in the polls, lead by David Cameron. Yet last Thursday when the major party leaders had the first live TV debate in the nation's history, it was the third political party - the Liberal Democrats - with their leader Nick Clegg stealing the headlines and the votes by winning the contest. His performance was so good that the other two leaders David Cameron and Gordon Brown have acknowledged the Liberal Democrat leader as the victor of the TV debate and will be divert resources to tackling the Liberal Democrats. Early polls have shown the Liberal Democrats are now SECOND in the polls behind the Conservatives.

I just want to state my political leanings right here. Back in the mid to late nineties, I supported Labour. However when they become more business oriented and more centre with their enigmatic leader Tony Blair and also decided to support the Iraq war, I switched to the Liberal Democrats.

I am a lefty at heart. I want more rights for minorities such as homosexuals, ethnic minorities and people of lower social class. Gays and lesbians should have rights to form civil partnerships and have the same benefits as married couples. There should be more done to prevent racial and sexual discrimination in Britain. I do believe in taxing the rich more to help fund services and helping the poor. Even though I believe business should allowed to be run free, there should be a degree of regulation as businesses, especially the large companies, should be hold some civic responsibility to their employees, their customers and their investors when things go wrong. I think more should be done for the environment, by improving public transport and curbing carbon emissions.

I know some people will not agree with my opinion, but that is why we different political parties. This is why we have democracy, so people can exercise their right to vote. I always believe if you cannot show up to the voting booth on election, you cannot complain about the government afterwards even if you would or wouldn't have voted them in.

All I want for people to do is actually listen to the leaders policies and views, then decide for themselves who they want to vote for. Even if it isn't for the Liberal Democrats.
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The next election I am looking forward to is the Hong Kong Legislative Council by-election on May 16th. One Legislative Counsellor in each of the five geographical constituencies have resigned in an attempt to hold a referendum on the issue of universal suffrage.

Currently in Hong Kong we cannot elect our Chief Executive directly and only half of the seats in the Legislative Council are held by geographical constituencies. The other half are held by businesses and vocational sectors in the "Functional Constituencies". We have counsellors representing the medical and health sector, transportation sectors, etc.

I have many points I could argue about the faults of the Hong Kong political system but I'll my arguments to two main issues.

Firstly I do believe their should be a referendum on whether or not the people in Hong Kong should be able to directly vote in their Chief Executive. However resigning on mass to trigger a by-election and costing the taxpayers money is not the way it should be done. Even their aim, to have universal suffrage by 2012, is impossible. A more reasonable target is to directly vote in the Chief Executive by 2017.

Secondly I do hate the idea of functional constituencies. That means certain people, most notably professionals, can vote in two constituencies - one geographical and one functional. As a doctor living in Tai Po, I can vote in the New Territories East geographical constituency and the Medical functional constituency. For some people who are not professional, like cleaners and construction site workers, they can only vote in the geographical constituencies. This is deplorable on any nature. It means the more professional you are, the more influential you are during the voting system, which is unfair. I hope soon their scrap the functional constituencies which should be totally illegally under The Universal Declaration of Human Rights from the UN.

Self promotion

I used to like Jamie Oliver. When he first came on the scene with "The Naked Chef", he was young and vibrant. He didn't try to make poncy dishes like other chefs I had seen on TV. He genuinely seem like a lad a young girl wanted to take home to her parents. He got people who normally didn't like cooking to have an interest in food.

He was also very influential politically. When he made the TV program "Jamie's School Dinners", it really highlighted what was wrong with British children's school meals, being full of fat and carbohydrates and very little choice of fruit and vegetables. It got the government into putting more money into school dinners, because for children the school lunch is the one meal you can influence to get them to eat healthy. This achievement earned Jamie Oliver a lot of praise.

After that it started to go slightly downhill from there. He started to make himself too commercial and too over-exposed. I seem to see a Jamie Oliver TV program nearly every day on the Discovery Travel and Living channel we have on the extra channels we have. He seems to produce a cookbook every year and now he starting to produce a magazine called - wait for it - "Jamie". Enough is enough already!

There is a point where people tend to over expose themselves and the general public start to wonder if they are doing this for good intentions or they love themselves too much. The same could be applied for Jamie Oliver. I wish he spent more time in the kitchen making good dishes instead of producing so many TV programs. I wish he actually spent more time with his kids rather than tell us what we should be feeding our children.

There are times when I see celebrities at charity gigs and wonder if they are feeding their own ego rather feeling genuinely proud to be supporting this charity. These are the stars who name charities after themselves and only turn up to gigs when required, instead of participating in the running of the charity itself. If you are a celebrity and are taking a fee to be at a charity event/gig, I think that is so wrong. I remember I once heard in the local news in Hong Kong that one televised charity event just about broke even after they subtracted the celebrity performers' fees.

Charity should be its own reward. That is why I never mention to anyone if I do any charity work or how much I have donated to charities. There is no need to. It is OK if you are trying to drum up support for you sponsored run/walk/ride to publicize the event but if you are saying, "I don't XXXX amount of dollars to XXXX charity" then it defeats the point.

Everything in one place

We are a society who likes everything in one place. We all want everybody to use systems that everybody else uses. We all go to YouTube to view videos online, despite its restrictions on copyright and there are other video online websites who are not as stringent as YouTube. We all use Facebook to contact our friends. In the past we used to have Friends Reunited and MySpace but we have moved on to Facebook. Ninety percent of computer users use Windows as their operating system, not because they find the system useful but everybody else in the world uses it. They are more worried about compatibility rather than performance. In Hong Kong nearly everybody uses the Octopus card to pay for everything and I was introduced to a Facebook page petitioning for Hong Kong taxis to accept Octopus cards.

I don't really mind this. Everybody wants to have convenience in their lives. However there are some annoyances I find whenever I use this websites.

If you are going to post a video on YouTube or any other online video website, please check to make sure that the video hasn't been put up before. And don't try to get people to come and see your video by tagging it with every single word known to man. Every time I try search for a video I'm bombarded with videos with very inaccurate descriptions.

The same could be said for Facebook pages for celebrities/concepts. Please don't set up ludicrous groups saying you like sleeping or hate text speak. Don't establish a fan page for Miley Cyrus, even though there is an official page already set up next to the other seven unofficial fan pages.

The internet is starting to clog up with too much stuff. Please don't put more non-sensible stuff on the World Wide Web.